Jane
Austen's novels have been repackaged as chick-lit to reflect our modern
conception of her as a romantic novelist. But her world is less
comforting than we think, argues Laura Thompson...

On
07/09/2006, Laura Thompson created a bit of a stir in the literary
world when she said that Chicklit--the girlie romancified summer book
lit that's gotten to be so popular among the young--had co-opted Jane
Austen, and specifically, Pride and Prejudice.

...It all started in fine non-literary style: with Colin Firth. The scene in the 1995 television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice
in which Colin got his shirt wet was, almost certainly, the moment that
opened the door and let the modern world in upon the quiet, oil-lit
writing desk at Chawton Cottage. And when Firth played Mark Darcy in
the film of Bridget Jones's Diary, the deal was sealed: Pride and Prejudice was on its way to fame and fortune.

Which brings her to a point we've discussed on this podcast:

...What on earth would Jane Austen have made of it all?

Well,
she would certainly have laughed - "I dearly love a laugh," says
Elizabeth Bennet, in the voice of her creator - and she would have
enjoyed all the money, because nobody was more aware of its importance.
Elizabeth and her sister Jane might have charm to spare, plus wit and
good temper to keep fear of the future at bay, but their genteel
poverty means that the men who marry them are not just lovers; they are
personal relief missions from lives beyond contemplation.

And
this acute alertness to the significance of money - to the humiliating
gulf between the shillings that buy Elizabeth's hair ribbons and
Darcy's £30,000 a year - is just one of the many aspects of Jane Austen
that has been lost to a contemporary audience.

She
goes on to say that too often, readers today just think it's neat that
Elizabeth wound up with a rich guy--rather than noting that it was her job to find a rich husband or live a life of drudgery. In reality, loving Darcy is the bonus. The real marriage is that of money.

....Actually,
there is rather more to Elizabeth than the perfection we behold in her
(and ourselves). What, for example, is one to make of her ambiguous
joke that she began to love Darcy on "first seeing his beautiful
grounds at Pemberley"? Sir Walter Scott, for one, thought she meant
exactly what she said; and I think he had a point.

....But the
novels as a whole are rather less comforting. Indeed, they are, in some
ways, terrifying. There is something appalling about the lack of
illusions with which Jane Austen viewed her little world. To censor out
such a judgment - or to condemn it as "male" - is to do her an extreme
disservice.

And the point she makes next made me feel bad for not making a bigger deal out of what Charlotte did, and why:

Take, for example, the character of Charlotte Lucas, one of Austen's finest, who cuts through the nonsense now waffling round Pride and Prejudice
like a particularly acid lemon. Her presence lurks sombrely behind
Elizabeth's lovely lightness: the two girls are faces of the same coin,
expressions of their creator's joyful esprit on the one hand and cold
eye on the other.

Like Elizabeth, Charlotte has a lively mind,
but, unlike her friend, she has no physical allure. A quirk of nature
has taken her out of the orbit of men such as Darcy. And, because she
is plain, she sees the world plainly. She calmly perceives its
limitations: the ruthless judgments of its marriage market, the life
sentence of inhabiting its tight social circles.

Seeing the
world, she also sees the possibility of falling off its edge. "Without
thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been
her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated
young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving
happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want." She snaps
up Mr Collins, the terrible suitor whom Elizabeth has the freedom to
reject. "I am not romantic, you know. I never was."

It
is almost unthinkable, by today's standards, to do what Charlotte
did--but she was wise, and right, and she seems to be "happy"...or at
least happy enough...

She is the stony reality at the heart of Pride and Prejudice.
She tells a woman's story, but in a way that is utterly remote from
feminine convention: with scant emotion, appealing to nothing other
than rationality. And, like her creator, she has remarkably little to
do with cosy readings of The Jane Austen Book Club and communal swoons over Mr Darcy.

...If Pride and Prejudice
can be so easily claimed by the Grazia brigade, why should the other
books be any different? It is not difficult, after all, to read what
one wants to read in a novel. Every reader does it, to an extent. But
the landscape of what is seen in books is becoming increasingly
impoverished. Indeed, it might be that the reality of literature no
longer lies within its words. As Jane Austen flourishes, the literary
sense that she possessed in its most refined form is slowly dying: the
irony would have amused her.

Hmmmmm...more to think about...As always, Pride and Prejudice is narrated by Annie Coleman. Intro music provided by GarageBand.com which connected me with Joshua Christian’s "Chasing Hiro."